


Ketchup and Tabasco Sauce

by intaglionyx



Category: Ace Attorney
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, Hamburger Girlfriends, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 03:48:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/781420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intaglionyx/pseuds/intaglionyx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>For a moment, Maya looks at you with grinning eyes over the edge of her menu, looking incongruously like a noblewoman hiding a smile behind her fan.</em>
</p><p>--</p><p>Franziska and Maya might finally be doing the dating thing.  Maybe.  She thinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ketchup and Tabasco Sauce

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rosage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosage/gifts).



> This is an early birthday present for Rosage, who's been a very good friend for around a year, and who comes up with the very best pairing names.

Maya takes you to some diner, one of those places constructed half of chrome and half of twentieth-century American nostalgia. You spend the ten-minute bus ride with your knee jostling against hers and her lips moving ceaselessly within an inch of your ear as she jammers about the latest Pink Princess ship wars and your brother's suspected involvement, a subject you would find perfectly amusing were it not for the distracting sensation of her breath on your neck. It's infuriating in a way that makes you feel a little guilty. You try to listen to her and to ignore the intimacy you feel despite the presence of a few dozen other passengers.

The street smells of sunlight and smog when you step off the bus, though the latter scent might have been left behind by the vehicle itself as it rumbled down the city blocks to your left. Her hand slips in and out of yours between your exiting the bus and entering the diner; you move to wipe your hand on your skirt, and feel strangely guilty for that, too. 

The air outside was almost preferable to the diner's interior, which, you fancy, smells like a vaporized McChain fast food restaurant in the heat of summer. The staff look cleanly enough, though, and the table your waitress sees you to is polished to a near mirror sheen, so that you can see Maya's unsteady and muddled reflection before the waitress lays a pair of menus down between you and leaves you in privacy. 

Your smiles have always been deliberate—usually genuine, but always consciously perfected—and so the different smiles Maya seems to flip between without thought have fascinated you since you struck up your odd friendship; the one she sports now reminds you a little of a cat's, understated but noticeable in the way it curls her lips at their edges. Then she flips her menu open and up, hiding the lower half of her face from view. For a moment, she looks at you with grinning eyes over the edge of her menu, looking incongruously like a noblewoman hiding a smile behind her fan. Then she looks to her menu, and so you look to your choices as well. 

At first you consider ordering a small salad, but Maya scoffs and tells you that it will probably be "crap." The rest of the menu is a sea of ground beef and fried seafood; you know you're being melodramatic, but it feels a little like choosing between methods of execution. You mumble this just loudly enough for Maya to hear. She snorts, then says your name in as disapproving a voice as she can really manage, which comes out as half a laugh anyway.

Eventually, you pick the "classic" cheeseburger. When you ask Maya what that means, exactly, she shrugs. She orders enough meat to live off of for a week, enclosed between two buns; she tells you that it isn't like you to exaggerate so much, which makes you flush just slightly from how right she is. 

As you wait for your food, the table goes quiet. Maya pulls out her phone and begins texting, or more likely reading something, by the way she only moves her thumb to flick upwards across the screen every so often. You look around you, and at her, and wonder if she's being a good or bad influence on you. Probably both, you decide; she's changing you, for better or for worse, and you can't bring yourself to mind enough to make any moves to stop the process. You wonder philosophically if a pot minds the motions of its potter's hands. Her hand was warm around yours for the moments it took for the both of you to reach the diner. You remember wiping your hand against your clothing, and you wonder why you did that, exactly.

Your thoughts run in circles for a few moments, until the two of you begin to make small talk again. The two of you talk about your brother's ~Hidden Double Life~ in Steel Samurai fandom—Maya somehow manages to pronounce it with the tildes intact—until your food arrives on two heavy plates that the waitress warns you not to touch until they've had a chance to cool down.

There, the conversation stops. Your half of the table becomes a noisy clatter of cutlery as you undo the napkin wrapped around your silverware and it all hits the chrome at once; Maya snickers at the look of consternation on your face, then tears open and squirts at least three different condiment packets at once onto her burger. The thing was a monstrosity of beef and bacon and sauteed mushrooms when the waitress brought the thing to the table, but now it looks like Maya slew it in battle, slathered in reds as it is. She rolls her eyes and tells you that it's "just" some ketchup and tabasco sauce, and you shove a carefully cut square of meat into your own mouth just to counter the bile that threatens to rise in your throat. 

You resolve not to admit to her just yet that your burger is entirely appetizing, in taste if not in looks; the look on her face in response would be far too smug to tolerate, if more pleasant to look at than the way she looks now, looking as though she has just mauled and devoured a cow herself. Before you know it, the burger is gone, save for a few barely recognizable scraps here and there on her plate. You're about to speak some dry quip about her appetite when you look down and realize that you've finished your plate as well, and far more neatly besides. You scowl, then motion to the waitress for your bill.

The sun's nearly done setting when you step outside; the air feels a little crisper, more early fall than late spring, and you're glad you wore long sleeves. Maya makes no motion to take your hand, and your fingers feel strangely naked and conspicuous. The bus is almost silent on the way to the Gatewater; there are only one or two people in the back, and Maya speaks in a stage whisper for the whole ride, unconsciously ticking your neck with her breath all over again. You consider turning to face her, brushing her lips with your jaw in a seemingly accidental way, and wonder to yourself how she would react. You don't, though.

The lamplit street doesn't smell like much of anything, but the diner's aroma still clings to your clothing when you step off the bus. It's a short walk to the Gatewater, and the gaudily lit sign above its streetside entrance is like a beacon. This time, Maya's hand does find yours again.

Half a minute's walk away from the hotel, she turns to you, switching her grip but still holding your hand, the ball of her thumb rubbing in slow, distracting circles against your palm. She looks at you silently for a few moments, until the awkwardness and anticipation threaten to split your face like an egg, and then asks if you'd like to stay for a while and watch a movie or something. You're about to drag out a reluctant no when she drops your hand, startling you, then takes the sides of your face in her hands and thrusts her face against yours. Her knees knock against yours as she adjusts herself so that your noses aren't mashed together. You float for a moment in blind panic, but then she puts her lips on yours and makes a sound against your closed mouth somewhere between a giggle and a grunt.

A moment passes where both your mouths are open and she's trying to stick her tongue past yours; you would probably be a lot more open to the idea if she didn't taste like ketchup, tabasco sauce, and meat. You wonder, for as long as it lasts, what she really tastes like, and try to focus on the feeling of her lips on yours and her tongue on yours, rather than the taste of American cuisine that makes your stomach do flips inside you. Or maybe that's just an effect of the kissing itself, you don't know.

You separate after that long, confused moment, and she's looking into your eyes with a smile catching at the edge of her mouth and asking again, in her most serious voice, whether you might like to watch a movie with her. An _n_ rests on your tongue inside your mouth for what feels like forever, until you say yes.


End file.
